


The Gaia Gene

by crystanagahori



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Adventure, Established Relationship, F/M, Pregnancy, Sort of follows Doctor and the Queen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-05
Updated: 2016-05-16
Packaged: 2018-06-06 13:41:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 12,330
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6756487
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crystanagahori/pseuds/crystanagahori
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p> “I’m not scared,” Donna lied. She knew the Doctor didn’t believe her, but even the fake show of confidence helped a little bit. She wished she could hold his hand. She needed to know that he was there.<br/>And all of this because of a distress signal they hadn’t even found yet.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

“Ooohhhh did you feel that?” The Doctor asked, his fingers dancing lightly over Donna’s arm as snuggled up against his chest. She was trying to fall into a lovely sleep, the kind actors have in films after they’ve just shagged. Was that too hard to ask for? 

Apparently, yes, if you were shagging a Time Lord. 

“The norepinephrine is just starting to fade off, you’ve spent that shot of adrenaline it created right at the height of your orgasm. Did you know that norepinephrine also increases your memory capacity? Helps lock things into your brain, searing it there, as it were. Its how you can remember the face of your beloved, it’s put into your brain like a snapshot. Then there’s oxytocin, rushing through your brain, mixing with the prolactin at the height of your orgasm! Creating feelings of emotional bonding, and signalling utter satisfaction. Brilliant! Molto bene!” 

“That’s assuming I actually _had_ an orgasm,” Donna chortled under her breath, but the Doctor was too deep into his thought process to make a comment on that. They both knew she was kidding anyway. She sighed and tried to go to sleep. 

“Humans and their hormonal reactions are brilliant! Quite different from a Gallifreyan’s obviously, we can control our reactions to a point. Oh look at that! Now what you’re releasing is a good, healthy dose of serotonin,” The Doctor continued, taking in a deep inhale of the top of Donna’s head. “Yep, there it is. It’s a perfectly natural secretion after climax. Makes you all calm and happy.”  
“Oi, I don’t _secrete_ anything, thanks,” Donna retorted behind closed eyes. 

“Naturally some hormones are weaker than others,” The Doctor commented, smiling as he saw Donna’s lips turn up just slightly. It was enough for him to know that she was still listening.

“And now,” he continued in a low voice, almost a hairsbreadth away from a whisper, “your body is slowing down, normalising the hormone releases as the serotonin takes over. So now…you’re falling….”  
An alarm’s loud ringing ended the otherwise calm moment between Donna and the Doctor. He sprang up from the bed immediately, his fingers grabbing the not so smooth shape of his sonic screwdriver as he bolted towards the nearby control panel that came with every room in the TARDIS. Weeeell, some rooms. Most rooms, let’s stick with most rooms. 

Donna’s head remained on the pillow as she watched the Doctor typing over the little console, his ‘thinking glasses’ already perched behind his nose. Where he pulled that from she had no idea. But the view was rather nice, she had to admit. 

“Distress signal,” he said behind grit teeth. “Coming in from the nearby star system.” 

A whirr of the sonic screwdriver later, the alarm stopped and the TARDIS hummed louder. They were moving, hurling across space and time faster than they had just a few minutes ago. The Doctor was already tracking the signal. 

“What’s it say?” Donna asked, padding over to him with the sheets wrapped around her. She was very good at keeping the Doctor from seeing her completely naked body while she was vertical. She may be in a semi-committed, honest-to-goodness, not-so-platonic-anymore relationship with the Doctor, but that didn’t mean she was going to start walking around starkers onboard the TARDIS, thanks.

“Here, give it a listen,” The Doctor said, jamming the screwdriver against the screen and letting it make a little whirr of sound. Then Donna heard the contents of the distress call. 

_“…greatly appreciated…Mayday mayday, this is Shadow Proclamation Planet Code Gamma-Alpha-Iota-Alpha. Request immediate evacuation and aid. Assistance greatly appreciated….Mayday…”_

“Gamma Alpha Iota Alpha?” Donna asked the Doctor curiously, and he scratched his chin slightly as if trying to remember something. “Bit of a mouthful for a planet name.”  
“Clearly you’ve never heard of Raxacoricofallapatorius.”

“Oi, be serious, Doctor,” she swatted his bare arm. “What’s going on? If someone needs help, we have to get down there _now_.”  
“Shadow Proclamation Planet Code γαια is for Theopolis Planetes, which happens to be in the same star system were faffing around in. We’ve locked on to their signal, and we should arrive right about…” 

The TARDIS gave a small thud as a low chime rang to signal its landing. The Doctor gave that slightly arrogant little grin of his. 

“…now.”  
“Show off,” Donna said, nudging his arm with hers as she made a beeline for the shower. If she was going to spend the next few hours rescuing people and evacuating an entire planet, she would much rather do that completely dressed, thanks very much. 

* * *

The TARDIS landed them smack dab in the centre of a large town square, which was highly unusual. Or perhaps the Doctor just parked her wrong. Nevertheless, when Donna opened the door, she peered out into a large, public space, with a round of concrete pillars standing against a gorgeous landscape of huge, lush trees, and soft grass. The square was marked by an arrangement of different coloured stones on the ground, creating makeshift tiles that formed a spiral pattern. Placed around the centre of the spiral, like numbers on a clock, were fountains that could rival the Trevi in size and splendour. But, they were turned off for some reason. There were more quiet fountains that lined their little walk, the Doctor using the sonic to try and track down the source of the signal.

“It’s like ancient Greece, but with more foliage,” Donna commented, stepping out of the time and space machine with her eyes sweeping the new surroundings. Nice to know the awe of visiting a new place never faded. “Are you sure this is Theopolis?”  
“Theopolis Planetes,” The Doctor confirmed, scrunching up his face and biting the side of his lip as he looked around as well. He took a deep inhale of breath, storing it in his lungs just because he could. Something was off here. Theopolis in the fiftieth century was a booming metropolis, teeming with a strong economy and generally happy people. The distress signal hadn’t made any sense. “An ancient rainforest planet famous for producing Aquarius Water.” 

“What’s so special about it?” Donna asked as they walked past yet another fountain. 

“Cleanest, most delicious water in the universe,” The Doctor informed her. “Or so their adverts say. I always get those in my spam folder. In the five hundred and first century, the recipe to produce Aquarius Water becomes such a commodity that those who know how to filter the water were paid millions and millions of credits to do so.” 

They continued their walk, finding more dead fountains, and wilder fauna. The trees seemed denser, despite the grass at their feet turning dry and brown. The Doctor didn’t like the picture that these little details were painting. He’d felt slightly on edge since they tracked this signal.

Plus there was that tiny detail that the signal was in Gallifreyan. Donna hadn’t noticed it because the TARDIS translated quickly, but the Doctor knew something definitely not good was up in the metropolis. 

They stepped farther from the TARDIS, trying to find the source of the transmission. The Doctor was too distracted with his thought process to notice that they’d caught the eyes of the humanoid locals. The park they’d landed in was apparently a lover’s point, because most of the Theopolians who saw them first were part of couples. They immediately began whispering and scuttling off before Donna could ask them anything.

“What’s going on? They’re all wearing masks,” Donna pointed out, as another couple bolted from their spot. “Breathing masks and surgeon’s masks. It’s like the SARS outbreak all over again.”

They walked past the park entrance that labelled the place the Agora, and walked down a brick road, still covered in foliage, to a large mass of buildings. They were all domed, like golf balls half-buried in the sand. What the Doctor saw made him frown deeply. 

“Oddly quiet for factories,” Donna commented. “Had a mate once who worked in one of those fancy water bottling companies. She always talked loud because her hearing was shattered from her job. If they were making so much water here, you would think it would be a little louder.” 

“Those aren’t factories,” the Doctor pointed out. “They’re temples. The Theopolians believe that the recipe for their water descended from their goddess Gaia, and their earth from the god Uranus. They built those temples to manufacture the water.”

“Uranus and Gaia, what, like the Greek mythology stories?” Donna asked. 

“Where do you think the Greeks got it from?” The Doctor asked, raising an eyebrow at her. He reached over and grabbed her hand in a smooth, quick motion. Some time ago, it would have meant nothing to Donna. They held hands all the time. It was a brilliant way for him to keep track of her while they were running. Now, it felt a little more intimate, much more special. Like he wanted to keep her close to him. He peered down at the sonic screwdriver, which gave a whirr. “Come on. Let’s see what’s going on down there.”  
“Halt!” A voice commanded behind them. “Put your hands up where I can see them and lower that weapon!”

They turned slowly and came faced to face with a man who looked like he literally walked out of the house with all his linens on. Layers and layers of multi-coloured fabrics draped over his body, all held together by an official-looking brooch on his shoulder. With the stern look on the man’s face, his serious-looking lace up sandals and the giant gun in his hands, his authority over them was practically a given. They were being accosted by a policeman. Isn’t that always the way?

“See now, how is he supposed to put his hands up and down at the same time?” Donna asked their captor without missing a beat. “Got to be a bit more clear, mate.”

“Yeah. Because if you were clear, you would have asked me to put the sonic screwdriver down _before_ putting my hands up, so I wouldn’t be able to do this!” The Doctor exclaimed, pushing a button on the sonic and sending out a quick, high-pitched whirr. This made the policeman’s brooch snap off and his fabrics to fall down leaving him in only his pants. 

“Sorry, must dash!” The Doctor quipped, giving him a little wink before he grabbed Donna’s hand and began to sprint back towards the Agora. He _loved_ running. The feel of the wind in his hair, his coat flying behind him and looking cool, with Donna’s hand clasped in his as they were pushed on by sheer adrenaline. A quick glance at the screwdriver to let them know they were going in the right direction and—

“DOCTOR, STOP!” Donna yelled so loud that the Doctor actually skid on the heels of his trainers like a cartoon, sending him sliding across a marble floor right before the space between his two hearts was impaled by a large spear. Apparently if there was anything you could count on in Theopolis, it was a quick-acting police force.

“Yep, that’s them!” The still-in-his-pants bloke from earlier confirmed with a larger, bulkier bloke. “They were the ones evading capture!” 

This time, the man was donned from head to toe in heavy bronze armour, so new that it glinted in the planet’s sweltering sunlight. While she appreciated the illusion of ripped abs created by the armour, the thin, transparent bubble that was over the man’s nose and mouth was slightly odd. The bubble shrank and expanded slightly with each breath, and Donna realized that the man and the whole army were wearing the same kind of breathing device. 

Before she could linger too long on it, she was already distracted by the helmet Fakeules here was putting on. The shape of it obscured the sides of his face, the front point coming to rest just above his broken nose where the bubble began. The top of the helmet had a creature of some sort moulded on to it, with teeth bared at Donna. She shuddered. 

The Doctor pressed his back against Donna’s front, instantly pushing her farther from the spikes as the guard made their advance. 

“Oh my god, oh my god,” Donna chanted. She was about to have a turn to grab his hand and run when she realised that there was another group of guards coming up behind her. “Doctor those look really sharp, and I have no plans of becoming barbecued at the moment!”

“Now now gentlemen, is this any way to treat a couple of tourists?” The Doctor asked, raising his hands innocently.

“We do not have any tourists here on Theopolis,” the head guard barked with a thick accent Donna would have normally classified as Greek. “You are corporate spies trying to find the recipe to our Aquarius Water. You will be jailed and executed for spying.”  
“I thought the Greeks were democratic folk,” Donna muttered under her breath. 

“Donna, try to remember that we’re not actually in Ancient Greece,” The Doctor whispered back, patting himself down quickly to pick up that thing he should have brought out as soon as they were first apprehended. “Right, here we go.” 

He flashed the psychic paper at them. 

“At ease gentlemen, we are the Doctor and Donna Noble, sent from the Health and Safety branch of the Bountiful Human Empire to check on the operations here on Theopolis. We’ve been receiving some calls and complaints.”  
That seemed to do the trick. The guard (Donna saw some Gerard Butler level potential in him) immediately turned to the others and gave them quick, curt nods to get them to lower their weapons. Donna didn’t remove herself from her tight grasp on the back of the Doctor’s coat, though.

“A surprise inspection?” He asked, taking a closer peek at the Doctor’s psychic paper. “So you would not mind if I asked our Chief Operations Oracle to call this Health and Safety Branch to confirm?”

Ah, so close. 

“Well it wouldn’t be much of a surprise if you _could_ confirm it,” The Doctor pointed out, but was ignored by the Gerard Butler lookalike. 

“Kronos, Altos, take them to the Juno Chambers for immediate processing. Then to the Interrogation Rooms. I will have to bring the Emperor into this matter.” 

Two of the bulky guards in the bubble masks grabbed Donna and the Doctor by the arms and began to drag them, but were having difficulty because of their struggling. One of the guards approached and pointed a small device at them, waiting for it to finish its whirring before he nodded and let them be dragged off. Donna caught the Doctor’s panicked look and instantly felt even more terrified. 

“It’ll be alright Donna,” he said to her quickly as his lip curled into his mouth. “I promise you it will.”  
“I’m not scared,” Donna lied. She knew the Doctor didn’t believe her, but even the fake show of confidence helped a little bit. She wished she could hold his hand. She needed to know that he was there. 

And all of this because of a distress signal they hadn’t even found yet.


	2. Chapter 2

“Welcome to the Juno Chambers,” an airy, computerised voice drifted from the speakers. “Your safety is our number one priority. Kindly approach personnel. Thank you, and have a pleasant day.” It was meant to be kind and reassuring, the way a newspaper was helpful against a monsoon, but the voice was drowned out by Donna’s continued yelling and threatening. Someone finally had the good sense to tie her wrists together while she was being pushed and prodded to one of the sterilised chambers. A man with a mask over his face and white linen robes was waiting for her, snapping a pair of gloves on. 

“What the hell is going on here?!” Donna barked, as she stood still in front of him. She was trapped in a bloody stasis field, which was just inconvenient on so many levels. The Doctor had been pushed off to a chamber right next to hers, and she could see that he was still running his mouth off, trying to annoy his captors into letting him free. He glanced at Donna, and she really tried to be reassuring. His glance proved to be a mistake, however, as the physician on his side took that opportunity to jab him with a needle and extract his blood. 

“DOCTOR!” Donna exclaimed, wishing she could hold him and just take his hand and run. 

“Everything will be fine, Miss Noble,” the physician (she refused to call him Doctor) said, turning towards a fancy looking high tech thing Donna couldn't describe. He turned back and held up a small syringe with a cool, blue liquid inside. She didn't like look of that.

"Yeah that flipping giant needle isn't very reassuring," she spat at the physician. Unfortunately, she was ignored. The physician stepped closer and put his hands through the stasis field like it wasn't there at all. His thumb was poised lightly on the trigger, drops of the strange liquidfalling to the floor near her toes.

"This is going to sting just a bit," the physician said, and Donna's eyes widened.

* * *

"DONNAAAA!" The Doctor yelled from inside his side of the chamber, but his voice fell deaf at the edge of the field. The man with the needle was getting way too close with a dosage of something that made him feel uneasy.

He looked around frantically, trying to find something, anything to distract them or do something to help her. But his hands were trapped against his sides, and his hearts sank his entire body ran cold. Horror of horrors, helplessness was starting to creep at him, and the Doctor knew once he let that take over there would be nothing he could do for Donna. 

Before he could surrender to the feeling, he heard a whirr coming in from the DNA splicer right in front of him. Oh the Doctor did _not_ like the sound of that. They’d taken a vial of Time Lord blood, and he was sure that the Theopoli had no idea what they were handling. He grit his teeth and watched the physician on his side place the vial in an analyser, letting the blood whirl in the chamber as he pushed buttons. What on Theopolis Planetes did they think they were doing? A DNA splicer, a mysterious vial of blue liquid? 

_Think, think, think,_ he yelled at himself mentally, wishing he could pull at his hair or rap the side of his brain with the heel of his palm. He couldn’t help that this regeneration was particularly tactile, which came in handy when he was…

_FOCUS._

The command was so loud that it jarred the Doctor out of his own train of thought. It took him a moment to realize that it hand’t come from him, but a voice at the back of his mind, like…like…

It couldn’t be.

“Initiating the Juno System.”

The Doctor’s eyes quickly scanned the machine, following the path that the wiring and tubing took. The tubings that carried the streams spit off into two areas. One ending at the machine emitting the stasis field on the Doctor, high above his head. The other crossing the room to Donna’s side and ending at the machine on her. 

He could see her in her stasis field, her eyes filled with worried tears as she glared at the physician who was fiddling with the machine on his side. The two men in white nodded at each other and simultaneously pressed a big red button on their consoles. 

The Doctor _hated_ big red buttons. 

Above his head, the stasis field generator whirred. Donna was looking up as well. The inside of the chamber was getting brighter, the sound was building. The Doctor started calculating possibilities in his head, still fighting at the last second. Donna’s eyes closed and she slumped just slightly forward. The Doctor’s hearts were pounding in his ears…and then it all stopped like someone had turned the whole thing off. 

_“Warning,”_ the same computerised voice from the hallway’s welcome message said. _“Processing failed. Results inconclusive. Warning…”_

Before the two men in the white robes could ask each other what went wrong, the two men from earlier—Kronos and Altos, stepped into the room. The partition that separated the Doctor from Donna fell away, and so did the stasis field. The Doctor was quick, but he wasn’t fast enough to catch Donna before she started to crumple to the ground. Kronos, however, had anticipated this, and easily lifted Donna in his arms bridal-style, sending a little flare of anger inside the Doctor. 

This had gone on long enough.

“Put her down,” He barked at Kronos. “Put her down _now._ ” 

“Why should I?” Kronos asked. 

“Yes, why should he?” A new voice asked, and the Doctor whirled in his spot to find a small man in shimmering gold robes watch the unfolding scene curiously. While the people of Theopolis were making do with makeshift breathing masks and shoddy old breathers, the man the Doctor assumed was the Emperor was encased in a hard bubble, not unlike those Zorb balls on Earth. It was the most advanced in breathing technology, capable to holding air for up to several millennia. The shimmer off his robes bounced off the walls of the breathing ball, making it look like the Emperor was wearing more gold than he actually was. 

“Because I can help you,” the Doctor said, his eyes wildly shifting in between the Emperor, Donna’s crumpled form and Kronos and Altos. “Your atmosphere’s shifted, too quickly if everyone’s suddenly wearing makeshift breathers. Half of your production temples look like they’ve been abandoned. Let Donna go, and I promise, I will do everything I can to help you.”  
The Emperor stiffened, as if surprised the Doctor had such intimate knowledge of Theopolis’ very obvious problem. But his face set in a sneer. 

“And who exactly are you to promise help?” He asked, like he was actually challenging the Doctor. 

“I’m a Time Lord from Gallifrey,” The Doctor said back, deepening the furrow of his brow. “And you do _not_ want to see me get angry, which I will, if you _don’t let Donna go_.”

* * *

Donna woke up abruptly, bolting upright from wherever she’d been lying. Big mistake though, as the sudden movement gave her a bad case of vertigo, the kind where the only way to stop it was to close your eyes and lie back down.

She heard movement shuffling around her, and she forced herself to open her eyes. She was face to face with a lovely woman with jet black curls and a light blue tunic, her heavily pregnant belly barely getting in her way. Like most of the people in the planet, she had a breather on, the same bubble one that the soldiers had, collapsing and ballooning up with each breath. She noticed Donna was awake and gave her a small, kind smile. 

“Ah bless the goddess, you’re awake,” she said, lightly squeezing Donna’s hand. “Are you feeling dizzy?”  
“Yeah,” Donna said warily, struggling to keep her eyes open. She needed a moment before she forced herself to sit up, with the young woman's help. Her temples throbbed and her arm felt sore. “Whappened? Who are you?”

The woman in blue robes furrowed her deep black brows. “I am the Oracle, chief overseer of the Temples of Aquarius. Well, what’s left of them anyhow,” a sad look crossed her face. “The Emperor himself had you brought here to make sure you were okay. Your partner, The Doctor—“

Donna was too dizzy and exhausted to snort at that. 

“—promised to help our planet. We will forever be grateful, if he manages it,” she said, handing Donna a glass of water to sip. Donna took the water and welcomed the coolness of it running down her throat. It felt perfect and satisfying….refreshing. She didn’t remember the last time water tasted so good. 

“Aquarius water,” Donna said absentmindedly before she took another greedy gulp. She looked over at the woman, who looked just slightly jealous of Donna’s greedy gulp. Donna blushed, slightly embarrassed. “Sorry. It’s refreshing.”

  
“Best water in the universe,” the Oracle agreed, giving Donna the same little smile, except this time it looked a bit wan. “I’m sorry I can only give you a glass of it…since things started changing we’ve been struggling to keep up with the demand, and…”

  
“What’s happening to your planet?” Donna asked, feeling much better now. She took a deep, cleansing breath (forgetting it might be just a little insulting to do that to someone who was breathing through a bubble) and stood up. “We heard a distress signal and followed it here, the Doctor and I.”

  
Sensing that Donna was feeling up for a little tour, the Oracle smiled and placed her hands under belly, and they started to walk around the temples together. They were on the second level, a perimeter that looked down on the water purification systems. It was run entirely by women in light blue robes, all in bubble masks. They were singing while they worked, a lovely hymn that reverberated off the walls. Donna noticed most of them were pregnant too. Strange. Must be a baby boom or something. 

“I could not tell you when it started,” the Oracle confessed. “Even I could not foresee the massive damage to our climate. There were great floods, scorching heat waves, until one by one, our people started dying.”

  
The Oracle’s voice hitched here, and Donna squeezed her arm reassuringly. “We made our analyses, and saw the levels of oxygen in our atmosphere was suddenly too high. Then there was the argon.”

  
“Argon?” Donna asked curiously. 

“It’s poisonous for us to breathe in,” the Oracle said. “We’re barely able to live in our own planet, Donna. Soon we pure Theopoli will run out of breathable air, and we will all die.”

  
She seemed less melancholic of this fact than earlier. But the Oracle said it in a way that sent chills up Donna’s spine. Donna took a deep breath again. 

“But all of the women are still working,” Donna pointed out, looking down at the active temple. “The men are still…what do the men do here, exactly?”

  
“They keep the peace, transport the water,” The Oracle said as they paused by the balcony. “Only female Theopoli are taught the ways of the purification of Aquarius Water. It is our religion, and what makes our sex revered in this planet. Even the Emperor has never set foot in these temples. I believe you are the first offworlder we have had here.”

  
“That sounds nice,” Donna chuckled. “I bet you get all the pampering at home then, keeping everything afloat here on the planet.”

“Our home is with each other,” the Oracle said quickly, almost a little too much. Donna caught the little snit in her tone and wondered why. “Especially with our…precious cargo.”

She rubbed the top of her belly, and Donna understood what she was referring to. So it _was_ a baby boom.

  
“The babies?” Donna asked, trying to imagine what it would be like to live with women 24/7. She’d done a sleepover once when she was in primary school, and things had turned immediately catty at Penelope Burns’ house. Donna admitted she had a fun time, gushing over the boys in their class they thought were dreamy, doing silly dares and talking about every girl who happened to leave the room. But now that she was much older, she didn’t think it would be an ideal living situation. 

“I mentioned that we will soon run out of breathable air,” the Oracle said. “So somebody developed a little…genetic boost to help things along. Every woman able to bear a child was injected with the Gaia Gene, matched with a male Theopoli that would produce the most desirable offspring and processed through the Juno Chambers.”

  
The casual mention of that place sent shivers up and down Donna’s spine. She remembered the bright blue liquid that had been injected in her arm and gasped. She’d been given the Gaia Gene. 

“And what does this Gaia Gene do exactly?” she asked, trying to be casual about this. Suddenly she wished the Doctor was here asking the questions. She needed time to process all of this information. 

The Oracle shook her shoulders, and if Donna didn’t know any better, she would think that she was _preening_. Like she was completely proud of this little advancement they had come up with. 

“It allows for our offspring to adjust to the new environmental conditions,” she said. “The Gaia Gene perfectly fuses the mixing DNA and helps create happy, healthy children that can survive this new climate. We made sure that this next generation will be able to breathe in their own planet.”

  
Donna felt something rising up from her stomach, gurgling uncomfortably. It was like she could feel that blue stuff travelling around her body, changing her insides in a way that she didn’t like. 

“Anyone processed through the Juno Chambers come out already pregnant with the offspring of their genetic match,” The Oracle said. She looked down and subbed her swollen belly again. She was like those yummy mummies Donna saw in the park sometimes, the posh kind that didn’t have to go to work and gave their children the same first name as their last name or something like that. “This little one was a match to the Emperor, and I could not be happier.”

  
This time Donna actually threw up in a convenient little bucket nearby. She knew that the processing had failed for her and the Doctor, but it was just too bloody ironic for her. The Oracle looked at her in confusion. 

“Is something the matter, Donna?”

“No, no, still just a little off,” Donna said, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand as she readjusted herself. The Doctor would want to know this. Where was he? “But I remember seeing couples near where we landed! Were they…” she tried not to sound too harsh. “…genetically matched as well?”  
She failed. The Oracle immediately flinched at Donna’s sudden hostility. 

“Those are the ones who are running away from a system that is only trying to protect them,” The Oracle said firmly. “The Theopolian Guard is working to recover the women to bring to the temples. Our planet will live one and evolve because of the Gaia Gene.”

There was a shout coming from the work stations below, and Donna and the Oracle’s heads snapped towards the sounds. One of the workers, a young acolyte was clutching her stomach, crying out in pain.

Donna didn’t hesitate and ran downstairs, and was the first one to help her calm down and take a deep breath. 

“Apollonia, Thebe,” The Oracle called from her perch. “Help Donna take Leto to Herania. It could be a miscarriage.” 

Donna looked up at the Oracle, standing high on her balcony like she was keeping the entire planet together on her shoulders. She didn’t doubt that she did. But Donna had to wonder if the means of keeping this planet together was the kind of thing that could break it apart.

 


	3. Chapter 3

“I need an answer, and I need now,” the Doctor said, pushing his brainy specs high up his schnoz as he looked down at the geological maps and weather tracking data that the Theopoli guard had happily provided him with. Trying to save a whole planet was already difficult, but the presence of the two beefy guards behind him was not helping. “Where. Is. Donna.”

He made sure to punctuate each word to get his point across. The Emperor settled inside his bubble, sitting on a throne like he was watching a very amusing show. The Doctor hated that smug little smile on his face, like his people weren’t being forced to breathe in artificial air. 

“She’s safe, just as I promised,” The Emperor sneered. “She is in good hands, and will be returned to you once we I am satisfied that you have aided us. I would want her…distracting you.”  
  
“She’s not a distraction, she’s my partner,” The Doctor spat, shaking his head. "Trust me, you would not want to be on the receiving end of her yelling if you get it."

The Emperor didn't flinch. The Doctor knew he wouldn't kill Donna without reason, so he had to trust the Theopoli'sword. Plus, Donna was a big girl, and if he knew her, wouldn't sit around twiddling her thumbs, that was for sure. 

He looked down at the data presented to him again. Ordinarily he would have wanted to have a survey of the entire planet, observe the plant life and sea levels, but he’d seen the residual atmospheric analysis results of the planet’s frankly impressive mass spectrometer (he needed one of those on the TARDIS, that was for sure) and realised that there was probably no time. The change in climate was almost instantaneous and severe, and there was only one explanation for it. The resulting analysis of the atmosphere made his hearts sink.

“The planet’s being terraformed,” he concluded, looking back at residual atmospheric analysis results, feeling his hands run colder as he looked at the new atmospheric components again. "From deep within the core, going upwards, causing all of this climate change. The planet is adjusting to the new conditions being set." 

All of the people in the room looked scandalised, gasping with their eyes wide. They had no idea. And they shouldn't. Terraforming was a tricky thing, managed only by very few planets. Even the Sontarans would have had to poison the Earth for decades before they could completely breathe free. For the climates to change this fast, and the planet terraformed this way, the Doctor had only hear of one planet able to do it. And it was just impossible. 

"Who would want to terraform this planet?" The Emperor asked, the first time the Doctor had ever heard concern in his voice. "Or have the capability?"

"Your planet core was mixed in with the Caelus Gene," the Doctor said, with unfocused eyes accepting the only logical conclusion he could make. "It alters land and atmosphere to make it suitable for physiologies that can optimise the ability to store oxygen, and use a respiratory bypass if needed. Suitable for beings who need a bit of argon in their air to strengthen their hearts. Your planet's average temperature comes out to fifteen degrees celsius exactly when it used to be twenty five." 

"Who created this Caelus gene, then?" The Emperor dared. All the colour drained from the Doctor's face. 

_Gallifrey,_ he almost said out loud. But it was impossible. Completely impossible. Nothing had survived the Time War. Nothing. 

_That's not true, though, is it?_ The little voice returned, making the Doctor straighten his spine as it communicated through his telepathic connections. He shook his head and tried to ignore it. 

"I have no idea," he confessed to the Emperor, immediately scouring the room for the proper supplies he needed. This bit, that bit, that bit was good. "Now if you asked an ordinary bloke to help you, they would say tracing the source of the new gene is impossible, but I'm not just an ordinary bloke."

The Doctor looked underneath the countertop he'd been studying the holo-results with and came up holding a large hammer which he brought down on the fancy new equipment in front of him with a horrible smash! He could swear he heard one of the scientists in the corner whimper. He pointed at a few things with the sonic screwdriver until he raised a small, shiny little thingamajig in his hands. It whirred and beeped and whistled and looked quite slapdash. The Emperor was not impressed.

"And what will that tiny device do, Doctor?" He asked.

"Oh this little thing?" The Doctor asked. "It can track the source of the atmospheric argon and bake a cupcake for one person, which would just be a shame, really, because you can’t have just _one_ cupcake. Now Emperor, allon-zy!"

Then he switched the device on and whipped off like a rocket from the room. The Emperor still had no idea who this man was, why he needed to say he was from Gallifrey (which to be frank, he knew had been destroyed eons ago, or why he was so knowledgeable, but this was more information that he had in the last five years. In a span of two hours, this stranger had a plausible theory and a way to find a solution. The Emperor was never a betting being, but he liked his odds here.

"Ajax," He said to the heard of the guard. "Follow the Doctor." 

The guard nodded and went out the door, with the Emperor signalling to everyone else to follow as well. 

* * *

It took three slightly wrong turns and one very bad wrong turn before the Doctor finally located the source of the argon. The amount in this air should have been toxic to humans, and in the back of his mind, he worried that Donna hadn’t gotten a hold of a breather. But she was strong, and he forced himself to forge on. The sooner he could fix this, the sooner he could get to her and take her far, far away. Funny how that seemed to be his course of action lately. He’d always been protective of his companions before, but Donna was…Donna was different. Donna was his…his partner. He missed her, her worried over her, and it threatened to take over him in a way he never thought would be possible. He was in love. He was happy. It was more than he thought he deserved, surely. 

But there was no time for love when faced with a terraforming device with an isomorphic response. He knew this device’s construction, he recognized the science behind it, the way it worked with just one glance. He should. It was made in Gallifrey. 

_There’s something else that’s wrong,_ the voice he’d been hearing told him. _You’re missing something._

“I’ve never seen this device before,” he said, holding it in his hands, trying to study all the nooks and crannies of it. “I should have, I thought I would. But the Gallifreyans, much less the Time Lords, _never_ created terraforming devices. They were content to watch from a distance. This wasn’t something that they did.”

The Doctor pulled out the sonic and raised it at the smooth metal case of the device, but paused when he saw something glint off the dim light. 

“Isomorphic hatch,” he said. “Oh that is clever.”  
“Isomorphic, Doctor?” The Emperor asked from behind him. 

“In a way, bad luck for us. An isomorphic lock only opens the device for a particular strand of DNA. And if I tried opening it with the _wrong_ strand, it will arm itself and explode.”

“Explode?” The Emperor suddenly asked, snapping the Doctor out of the train of talking that he was caught in. 

“Boom,” he agreed, frowning as he took a turn around the device again. It was releasing argon and converting the atmosphere at an alarming rate, but it wasn’t activated yet. 

What was the connection between Gallifrey and this device? Why this planet in particular? 

_You’re missing something,_ the voice repeated. _You great big outer space dunce._

* * *

Donna jogged down the narrow corridor with the young woman lying on the gurney. She looked like she was in pain, curling up into a ball and whimpering. All Donna could do was whisper platitudes and promises that things were going to be okay, even if she didn’t really know if they were.

“You’re going to be okay, sweetheart,” she said, patting a cool washcloth over her fevered brow. She knew the signs of a miscarriage, but kept her mouth shut for fear of scaring the girl. 

“How do you know?” She asked with a small voice. The girl couldn’t have been older than twenty, small and fragile as she was. The Oracle must have meant it when she said that every eligible woman was made to pass through those bloody Juno Chambers. 

Donna swallowed thickly like a bitter pill she needed to force down her throat. 

“I’ve been through it myself,” she said to her, feeling her heart ache at the admission. She’d never said it out loud to anyone, certainly not like this. “Two times.”  
And for the moment, the briefest of moments, the girl forgot her pain and widened her eyes at Donna, who smiled and squeezed her hand. 

“I should have learned, I know,” she said as they were pulled into one of the rooms. “But …these things happen.” 

She hated to oversimplify it like this, because in truth she was _not_ alright. She was still in pain, she still winced every time she and the Doctor touched. She was getting better, but she still hurt. It was perhaps always going to hurt. 

“Do you still want one though?” Leto asked. The question broke Donna’s heart. She was too young to be asking herself those kinds of things. Donna was too old to admit that she wanted more. 

This wasn’t the place for her to lie. 

“Yeah,” Donna said with a small smile, as Leto accepted the answer, her eyes closing as her body surrendered to the inevitable. Donna dropped her lifeless hand in shock, her eyes wide, stepping back from the bloodstained bed. 

“She died?” a voice from the door asked, and Donna looked up with her tear-stricken cheeks. God, she had been so close to death so many times traveling with the Doctor, but this…she could never get used to this. There was no way to prepare for it, to see it coming. 

“Yes, she…she was in pain and then she….”  
“The Gaia Gene doesn’t always match the specific genetics of Theopoli,” the woman at the door said, her dark eyes studying the expired corpse whose hand Donna was still holding. “She would not have been able to bear a child.”

Donna dropped the hand quickly, and watched the woman by the door come forward and place a clean sheet over the body to cover her like she was never there. 

“Why would you allow this?” Donna asked, shaking her head as a small group of women came to take the body away. “If it doesn’t always work?”  
“A desperate planet will turn to the most desperate of measures,” the woman said, turning to Donna at last. Donna looked up at her large, Amazonian frame, the shock of blonde hair that cascaded around her face. The deep blue of her robes made her light blue eyes stand out so sharply Donna thought she would be pierced. She almost didn’t notice the breather around her mouth.   
“My name is Herania. I take it you’re the…outsider.”  
She said this without derision, or anger. It was more like she’d forgotten which word to use. Herania was delighted to be of acquaintance to someone who wasn’t from Theopoli.

“Yeah, Hi. Donna Noble,” she stammered. “Where are we?”  
“This is the Nursery,” Herania said, pulling Donna lightly up by the arm to lead her away from the body. Donna looked back one last time at Leto and felt a chill run down her spine as she disappeared from view. “Where all the future children of Theopoli will be housed until they are old enough to live with their mothers.”

But the nursery was empty and dark, almost abandoned in its unuse. Donna swallowed thickly. 

“But there are no children,” she realized. “They haven’t been born yet.”

“Not yet,” Herania said in slight disappointment. “The bloody Oracle and the Emperor’s child will be born first. They insisted to the Keeper that they would be the first to go through the Juno Chambers.”

“Did they?” Donna asked with wide eyes. It didn’t seem like the Oracle.

“No,” Herania said with a little laugh. “They weren’t. I was, of course, although it did not take. You see, the Keeper developed the Gaia Gene after taking it from the Caelus gene from his terraforming device.”  
  
“You what?” Donna asked again. She had been traveling long enough with the Doctor to know when she’d heard something important, and this was that moment. Terraforming. Where had she heard that before? 

The Sontarans, the poison sky. They wanted to turn Earth into their new planet. The Doctor had called it terraforming. The pieces fit in her head like a puzzle, and while she had figured it out, she knew the Doctor was probably already looking for the terraforming device. 

“My husband was the Keeper,” Herania said like she was talking about the weather. “The last off worlder to come to Theopolis before you. He came with the terraforming device millenia ago, and he extracted the Cealus gene from there. Then he reengineered it to make it absorbent by our bodies.”

“Where’s the terraforming device now?” Donna asked in a slight panic. No time to really ask questions. She had to find that device, and she was as sure that the Doctor would be there. She’d been away from him for too long, and it made her worry. She needed to see him, just to reassure herself that things were going to be alright. She need to touch him and feel calm. For some reason she didn’t want to be far from him. This was almost too much to her. 

“Worry not, Donna Noble,” Herania smiled. “You will see it soon.”


	4. Chapter 4

Donna furrowed her brows at the large Theopoli woman across her. She didn’t like this, not one bit. She didn’t like that sinister, knowing look on her face, she didn’t like the fact that she was gorgeous and busty like an Amazonian warrior off the page of some film one of her old boyfriends Andrew would have been obsessed over. He was a card carrying comic book lover, and while Donna found it endearing at first, the affection wore off quickly when she realized he was sleeping with cosplaying little tart from Southwark when Donna wasn't looking. She knew when she was being threatened, travelling with the Doctor for as long as she had, and she still didn’t like it.

Herania handed her a small cup of water to sip. Donna drank it greedily.

“What’s _that_ supposed to mean, then, 'you'll see'?” She asked Herania, unsure if she should defensive or sensitive to this woman. The Doctor always seemed to know when he should get all shouty and when to speak in that deep, calm voice of his. Donna didn’t want to think right now about how much of a turn-on it was. 

It was though. It was _really_ bloody sexy. 

Donna had only one default mode. Shouty. Shouty and bolshy, that was her. So when Herania reached to take her hand, she immediately slapped it off. 

"I'm not going anywhere until you tell me what the bloody hell is going on!" She insisted, glaring Herania down. "And don't say that I will see soon, I want to know. Now!"

Donna plonked herself down on a nearby rocking chair and crossed her arms. Not even the end of this planet could make her leave the chair right now. She knew she had to get to that device and stop it terraforming the entire planet. The babies in their mothers’ wombs would live, the Gaia Gene would help them survive. So many things she had to do, but right now, she was sitting in this rocking chair. She knew she sounded like a spoiled, whingeing child, but she didn't care. Herania huffed and placed her hands on her waist. 

"I will start at the beginning," she said exasperatedly. "As you know, all women on Theopolis are made to work at the factories, and I was purifying water from the day I had my cycles. It was tedious and thankless until the day he came in his sleek, shining TARDIS." 

Donna's heart stopped. What on Thepolis Planetes was she talking about? Donna knew of only one TARDIS, and while she loved that old box to bits, but she wouldn't call it sleek or shining. She held her tongue, knowing the story wasn't over. 

"The Keeper said he was part of his planet's Expansion Program, a task that came with such high honours that the Council gave him his beloved TARDIS, the new Type-45 model. He came to Theopolis to learn how we altered our lands to build our cities. He brought the device here. He was wild and adventurous, funny and passionate. It was inevitable that we fall in love." 

Donna couldn't stop herself from visibly flinching. What the fuck was going on here? The Doctor was insistent that he was the only one left, so who was this Keeper? Surely not a Doctor from the future...or could it? Donna never fooled herself into thinking that she would live forever, and River bloody Song had certainly alluded to that, but this didn't feel right. 

"We married here in Theopolis, and he was so happy. We wanted to have children, but our biologies, they...they just didn't work," Herania continued, and Donna felt her heart wrench for her. She knew the feeling well enough to bite her own lips and try her hardest not to let her tears fall. 

“The Keeper began to develop the Gaia Gene from the Caelus Genes in his terraforming device," Herania said. “He wanted a way for us to have children here in Theopolis. But then he was called back home to his planet because of the war." 

There was only one war she could be referring to, the same one that still haunted the Doctor to this very day. Donna’s mind suddenly filled with images of his planet at war, silver branches on the ground, the sky split apart with the fire of Gallifrey' twin suns. He once told Jenny that being a Time Lord was being a part of a shared history, and this was it. 

"He went back to his planet immediately, managing to send me messages," Herania continued. "He told me about the destruction. The Star of Degradations. The Horde of Travesties. The Nightmare Child. The Could-Have-Been King with his army of Meanwhiles and Neverweres. He told me of the Citadel burning, and the Flower of Remembrance in the skies. Hell had descended on his planet,” Herania shuddered. "He said there was only one hope left. He wanted to make Theopolis the new Gallifrey, to let his people live on. Gallifrey would burn, but they would live.” 

Donna gasped. It was a horrible thing to even think of. Could the Doctor’s people really want that? To destroy one planet so they could live? The Doctor was always telling her how important they were, how great and noble the Time Lords were, and only the most brilliant and noble of people with a skewed sense of pride would think of something like this. Was it possible? Worst of all...did the Doctor know? It didn’t sound like something he would have wanted. 

Or did the Doctor she know now come out of the ashes of those horrible thoughts and ideas? 

Donna suddenly shuddered at the thought. She was very rarely hit with the realization that she knew nothing about the Doctor. Because they were at a level of their relationship where everything seemed shared and halved as partners, the little that she actually knew of him never occurred to her. Even when she first trusted him and sought him out, she never thought of asking the details. 

But that was a part of the Doctor’s allure, wasn’t it? 

She felt sick to her stomach. 

"The Keeper died in that war eventually. Everything died, as you know,” Herania concluded. "Everything except the terraforming device. So I armed it, seven years ago and the terraformation began. The new children will be part Theopoli, part Gallifreyan, and my husband's dream will be realized." 

Despite herself, Donna was crying. She cried for those poor people who died in the Time War, the children that the Doctor only mentioned once in passing, the Theopoli who died because of Herania's madness. She cried for the Doctor too, just a little, because she knew that once he found out about all of this (and he would find out, because he had to), this would break his hearts. The Doctor always found out. 

"Why the distress signal, then?" Donna asked, the thought suddenly occurring to her. The signal that had brought them to this planet in the first place. She thought it was the Emperor or the Oracle, but they seemed to know nothing about it. ”I saw the TARDI--our ship translating it from Gallifreyan when we were flying. Why were you looking for surviving Gallifreyans, especially if you think everything died?"

Herania turned and fiddled with one of the nearby cabinets before she gave Donna an answer. "Because, Donna Noble," she said, walking towards her like the Chesire cat that got all the cream. "My husband's device is isomorphically sealed. In order for it to complete the terraformation, it needs authority from a higher being. A Gallifreyan altered by staring into the depths of the Vortex. The only being who could possibly survive something as horrible as the Time War.” 

"A Time Lord," Donna gasped and sucked in a much needed breath. Oh god. The Doctor was in more danger than she was. 

Herania's grin, if possible, grew even wider. "Yes. A Time Lord capable of breathing in the new atmosphere without trouble. A Time Lord travelling in a…TARDI---ship just like the one you landed in!” 

Donna's knuckles turned white as she gripped the sides of the rocking chair. Minor correction. _She_ was the one in danger now. The bloody woman thought she was a bleeding Time Lord! God, this wasn’t her day. It was so not her day. 

“Did the Council send you after my husband died?” She asked Donna, the madness making her eyes glow and her breather bubble pulsate with each hiss of breath. “Did they ask you and your husband to come and continue the project? It’s the perfect example, a family of Time Lords to repopulate Theopolis!”

“Herania,” Donna said firmly. “Gallifrey has been gone for…the longest time,” she hesitate. God, she didn’t even know how long ago Gallifrey had been gone. She could practically hear her mother’s voice now, telling her off for not finding out more about a bloke before running away with him in his TARDIS, promising forever and holding his hand. 

Donna had done way more than holding his hand, but that was beside the point. 

“Nothing you can do will ever bring the Keeper back,” she said, trying to find the last bit of sanity in the woman. “You’ll risk killing off a whole generation for a planet that doesn’t exist anymore!”

"I hope you're feeling comfortable, Donna Noble," Herania said, unable to hear Donna’s frantic pleas. She turned, just as abruptly, Donna’s entire world started to spin. "A little sleeping potion mixed with the Aquarius Water can be dangerous." 

Fuck. The water. Donna had made the first mistake every traveller made and drank the native water. As if she hadn't learned her lesson after getting sick in Egypt drinking water from the tap! This would have been hilarious if it wasn’t life or death. But then again, she was travelling with the Doctor. Everything was life and death with him. 

As her vision started to fade, she vaguely noted what Herania was holding behind her back. That was a pretty flipping big needle. She hoped she wasn't going to poke her with it.

* * *

Something inside the Doctor snapped, and he immediately flinched. Like someone was calling urgently for him, begging for his help. He whirled around, trying to see where it was coming from. He hadn’t heard these kinds of voices and calls for so long, he dared not think…

“Doctor,” Ajax said, pulling him immediately from his thoughts. The Doctor turned to the Theopolian guard and saw him carrying most of the wires in a bundle in his arms, looking like a strange bouquet of flowers. The Doctor’s mind focused quickly, recalling what he was supposed to be doing. “What am I to do with these devices?”

Because the device was activated but not fully armed, the Doctor decided to hook it up to the TARDIS and see if she knew anything about the device and how to deactivate it. If it was Gallifreyan, it was probably recorded somewhere. The Time Lords were nothing if not efficient. The Emperor had volunteered Ajax and his men to the task of assisting the Doctor, and after the usual exclamations of “blimey, it’s bigger on the inside!” were done, everyone got to work. 

To the credit of the Theopolian guard, they were fast workers, and never questioned the Doctor, which was how one of them ended up pumping a bike tyre while the Doctor got the TARDIS in auxiliary power mode. The Emperor was content to sit from a safe distance away and have food brought in.

“Attach the same colours to the panel here,” the Doctor instructed, pointing out the area under the console where the USB ports were. The console hummed and the display screen showed a confirmation message that the device was connected. 

“Now what?” Ajax asked, standing next to him like he could read what was on the screen. The Doctor highly doubted it, though. He’d specifically asked the TARDIS not to translate anything. He was a trusting bloke, yeah, but that didn’t mean he was happy about soldiers with massive, futuristic guns running around the ship. 

“Now we read,” the Doctor said, pointing at the console with the sonic, letting both devices hum on the same frequency to begin the analysis. He put on his brainy specs when the TARDIS went ‘ding!’ to signal the completion of the study. 

The information the Doctor saw was not good. Not good at all. As a rule of thumb, all Type-40 TARDIS-es came the full stock of the Gallifreyan and Time Lord Archives, everything a Time Lord could ever need in terms of knowledge of the universe. He’d heard that classified, secret files were also included during a translation error, which was why this particular model had been quickly decommissioned, until the Doctor took it and flew away from the Time War. 

He’d just stumbled on one of those classified files. His mind reeled at the plans the Council had for this innocent-looking terraforming device. Expansion, new world creation—they were talking about creating a whole Empire of Gallifrey. This little device seemed to be the only thing of its kind that had survived. The Keeper was supposedly the first and the last tasked with the terraforming device and the Expansion Program, and he was listed as one of the casualties of the Time War. 

The Doctor shuddered. He knew they had flown too close to the Time Lock. By Theopolian standards, the Time War was only seven years ago. If the Keeper was holding on to a device of this power, the isomorphic lock made sense. It would only be unlocked by a Time Lord, one with the assent of the Council to destroy an entire planet just for Gallifrey. He had to get rid of this device before it caused any more damage. 

The TARDIS made a small beeping sound, and the Doctor activated an available sequence to try and switch the device to manual. If he managed to do that, he _might_ be able to find a way to maybe switch off the terraforming. Based on the design plan in the archive, there was actually a reverse button, which would be useless if the planet was saturated to 60%. Theopolis in seven years was already up to 53%. 

“Come on, come on,” The Doctor grit his teeth as the TARDIS tried to unlock the terraforming device. He needed at least a few more minutes, but he had a strange feeling he didn’t have minutes. Something inside him jerked again, and he turned his head. 

“Donna,” he said, her name escaping his lips with worry and reverence it took him off guard. 

“Doctor!” Kronos said, jogging up the entrance ramp to the TARDIS like he’d been doing it all his life. Altos followed him with a face masked with concern. The Doctor’s hearts dropped to his stomach. He knew something was wrong. 

“Have you found her, have you found Donna?” He asked immediately, and the two guards exchanged looks.

“She’s in the Temples with Herania,” Altos said. “The Oracle told us as much.” 

“Is she coming, then?” The Doctor asked, and when the two only exchanged looks again, he said. “Is she?”

“We are not allowed to step foot in those Temples, Doctor,” Kronos explained. “But my…my girlfriend, Briseis, told me that Herania’s got her locked up in the Nursery. She’s a bit of a nutter, Herania. They said she lost her mind after she lost her husband seven years ago.”

“Let me guess,” the Doctor breathed. “The Keeper.” 

Altos was the one who nodded this time. Suddenly a loud, high pitched ring filled the air, and the soldier’s clamped their hands over their ears, their eyes wide with fear until they passed out cold. 

The Doctor, unaffected by the sonar frequency, quickly noting that Theopolian biology made them very susceptible to frequencies of sound. This particular one must knock them out. The Doctor was off like a rocket, his feet pumping as he ran out the door to find Donna. He had just exited the TARDIS when he heard a voice squeal. The Emperor, who was always famously wearing ear plugs. 

The Doctor turned just in time to see that he didn’t have to run far to find Donna. She was unconscious and slumped against her side on a wheelchair. The Emperor’s eyes were wide and terrified as he looked at the Doctor. It was totally understandable for a man with a gun pointed to his head. 

The woman holding up the gun must be the infamous Herania. The Doctor sucked in a breath and tried to tamp down the rage and anger rising from within his chest. Despite everything, he knew that now was not the time to be angry. Not when Donna was so close to the gun. 

“Doctor,” the Emperor said frantically. “I believe Herania has some need of you. Herania, this is the Doctor. He’s a Time Lord from Gallifrey.”  
Herania actually smiled sweetly when the Doctor bit his bottom lip and bared his teeth. He was almost vibrating with anger, his eyes swirling dark storms of rage just below the surface of a skinny alien in a blue suit. His eyes flashed briefly to Donna. She looked like she was breathing fine for now, but the concentration of argon down here wasn’t going to do her any favors in a few minutes. 

“A pleasure, Doctor,” Herania spoke, her fingers unmoving from the gun against the Emperor’s head. “Now please activate the device, as the Council instructed you.”  
  
“I wasn’t sent by the Council,” The Doctor explained. “And I have no plans of arming the terraforming device for you.”  
  
“And yet you’ve attached it to your TARDIS. Why did you decide to turn it into a wooden box? It seems quite indecorous.” She immediately slammed the butt of her weapon against the side of the Emperor’s head, and he passed out cold against a plate of sandwiches.   
  
“What have you done to Donna?” the Doctor asked.  
  
“She’s asleep, which is better for her, because I already have what I need,” Herania said, pulling a vial of bright red blood from her pocket. Oh no. “There’s enough Time Lord DNA here to clone her! Would that not be amusing, Doctor?”

She thought Donna was a Time Lord. The Doctor didn’t know if he found that reassuring or terrifying. He ket his focus on Donna, keeping track of her breathing. Seeing her, keeping focused on her, helped him keep his calm. He needed to think about his next move. 

Herania neared the device with Donna’s blood. The Doctor knew it would do nothing, since Donna was human, and allowed Herania to submit the blood for the isomporhic checks. The Doctor was already smiling, ready to tell her why it didn’t work. 

_ TERRAFORMING DEVICE IS ARMED. PLANET-WIDE RELEASE OF CAELUS GENE IN THREE MINUTES.  _

The Doctor’s panic rose quickly. What? It made no sense! Why would a device with Time Lord isomorphic response activate to Human DNA? The last time he’d seen that was when Donna was…was…

_The metacrisis is over, get a grip._ The voice in the back of his mind fluttered. _This is something else._

But what? What was going on? What could he do now? 

_Come on, Spacedad. You know what you have to do._

The Doctor was taken aback as the connections fell into place. His mind’s eye had seen a bright golden thread between himself and Donna, and a tiny, brilliant little thing wrapped around them both. He’d been so used to the quiet that he didn’t understand what it was until now. 

Donna was pregnant, and the Gaia Gene had ensured that their child would live. It was the child talking to him now, berating him and keeping him in line, just like her mother. 

The Doctor reached out with his mind, and felt his hearts swell as his daughter reached back, entwining her young consciousness around his. It was an overwhelming song of pride and love, quickly turning to urgency to remind him of what was happening. 

By this time, the terraforming device was still connected to the TARDIS and attempting to fall down the direct hatch to the planet core that it had been creating for the last seven years. Once the device was in the core, it would be too late for the Theopoli. They would never be able to live in their planet, and Gallifrey would be restored in the worst way possible. The Doctor noticed Donna’s breath hitch and gasp, the argon in the air becoming way too much for her to handle, even with the Gallifreyan child in her. 

His eyes quickly assessed the situation and knew there was only one thing to do. He walked towards Donna. Herania was too distracted with the activated device to notice come close.

The Doctor looked down at Donna and kissed her. He kissed her and gave her a store of breath from his respiratory bypass, wondering if it was the last thing he could give her. Her breathing evened out, and he knew he had just enough time to do this. 

“We had the best of times,” he whispered into her hair. “I love you.”

He afforded himself a squeeze of her hand before he ran into the TARDIS, pushing out the passed out bodies of Ajax, Kronos and Altos, closing the door before he went to the console, pushing buttons and turning bike pumps, pointing his screwdriver at the TARDIS and getting her ready to fly. To Herania, who was too far gone to really notice, it looked like the Doctor was trying to run away. The wires between the terraforming device and the TARDIS snapped off, and the device started to fall down into the hatch.

But much to Herania’s surprise, the TARDIS quickly followed it, falling down the proverbial rabbit hole. The Doctor knew that the only way to destroy the Gallifreyan invention was with another Gallifreyan invention. This was his last ditch effort, and he was too busy plunging the TARDIS into an instant rip in time in space (because of the devices’ collision and its distance from a Time Lock) to really take stock of anything else. 

The next thing he knew, everything around him was burning. It wasn’t the first time. 


	5. Chapter 5

he TARDIS was being pulled into the rip, caught in the helpless, random ebb and flow of time around it. The Doctor was being tossed along with it, and his only com fort was in knowing that the terraforming device (they really needed to come up with a name for it) was falling into the rip with him, broken and now useless as a piece of scrap metal. He held on to the console without really knowing why. He was at the end, the point of his life where not even regenerating could have saved him. 

Systems were failing around him and the Doctor closed his eyes, wanting his last thoughts to be of Donna and the child he was never going to see. He wondered vaguely if she would have looked like Donna. She certainly talked to him like she did. Or perhaps he was just imagining the voices in his head. It had been so long, too long. He wouldn’t have wanted to be a father again anyway, after everything.

That was a lie, and he knew it. Of course he would have wanted to be there for Donna. He’d told her once that a part of him had died when his family died in the Time War. It was still true, but slowly, slowly, Donna had made him feel whole again. He was never going to be completely whole. Scars were there to remind us of things passed, after all. But this. This would have been a wonderful adventure to go on with her. 

_ SYSTEM PROTOCOLS ACTIVATE. INITIATING THEOPOLIS RETRIEVAL PROTOCOL.  _

“What?” The Doctor asked the dying TARDIS around him, whirling his head around as if someone was going to tell him if he’d heard him right. The ship shuddered around him, and he kept his hold on the console even tighter, despite the unhealthy sparks that burst out from the inside. 

“Oi Spaceman!” Donna’s voice filled the control room, and the Doctor saw a hologram of her appear on one of the upper rungs. This wasn’t the same Donna he had left on Theopolis. Her body was fuller, and her eyes were brighter, her hair shorter and curlier in a way the Donna he knew would have never allowed. “Relax, this is just a projection thingy. I’ve no idea if I’m doing this right. But if I am right, then you should be hurling to your death down a rip in time and space, am I right? Don’t answer because this just a hologram!” 

Despite the danger looming around him (he could swear that parts of the TARDIS were slowly disappearing, like inky black mould reaching out to claim everything around him), the Doctor couldn’t hide a little smile. 

“We set up this little protocol and made sure it would work today, because it has to,” Donna said. “I need you, Spaceman. More than I will ever manage to say.”  
There was a pause and the Doctor felt the TARDIS shift again, like she was being pulled by an opposite current. The black mould that nearly reached the tips of his trainers was being sucked backwards, the shaking slowing down. But Donna’s hologram remained, her face pensive. 

“I thought about a lot of things when I was alone on that planet, Doctor,” she finally said, making him look up. It wasn’t really the best time for her to tell him his thoughts from the future while everything around him was still crumbling, but the distraction was welcome. “I thought I was such a nutter, following you without even knowing your name. Without even knowing anything about you. But I know now that it doesn’t matter what your planet was, which constellation it is or who the Time Lords were. What matter is you, Doctor. The way you inspire me every day, the way you make me laugh and how you showed me how wonderful the universe can be.” 

She smiled, and her head turned slightly to the side when a small voice called for her. 

“Mummy?” it asked, although it was off-screen. “Can Jenny and I bake in the mess hall?”  
The transmission quickly ended, but the Doctor could swear he saw Donna give him a tiny wink before the TARDIS completely shut down. 

* * *

Donna woke up in horror and threw up immediately. Herania was laughing when she told her what the Doctor had done, following the device down the rabbit hole. Donna’s heart constricted in her chest as she looked into the hole helplessly, her tears blurring her vision.

Suddenly, the asthmatic wheezing of the TARDIS caught her attention. The machine was struggling, she knew, and she wished that it worked like Tinkerbell did—believe and she would appear. 

The TARDIS finally landed and the Doctor emerged, battered, bruised, but very much alive. 

“Am I…he asked, reaching up for his hair. “Am I ginger?”  
  
Donna ran to him and pulled him towards her body, her heart settling at the familiarity of his shape, his slight coolness. The Doctor’s hands wrapped around her as well, and for a moment, she wished he would never let go. It would make going to the loo pretty much impossible though, so they both relented and looked at each other. 

“Am I…” he asked almost dejectedly. “Am I blonde?”  
  
“No, Spaceman,” she smiled at him. “You’re not blonde.”  
  
Then without so much as a goodbye to everyone else, they walked into the perfectly working TARDIS and left Theopolis Planetes. They would recover. Soon the planet would be back on the right track, with the men and women caring for the new generation together as they wanted.   
  
But for now, the farther they were from all of this, the better. The Doctor and Donna had a future to look forward to, after all.

 

THE END! 


End file.
